The rejection of Erie's ballot question 3A, which asked residents to give the go-ahead on a nearly $14 million town hall expansion project, has thrown the town's already contentious agreement with Waste Connections Inc. to shutter the Denver Regional Landfill into murkier territory.

The deal, which includes stipulations to close the depot by 2021 while expanding the adjacent Front Range Landfill by dozens of acres closer to nearby homes, was sold to residents in part on the company's promise to contribute roughly $4 million to the town's long-heralded town hall expansion.

According to the details of the agreement, those funds are not necessarily earmarked for the project, but the question of where that money could now go may have an impact on how town leaders vote on the deal.

A Board of Trustees vote on a pre-annexation agreement was tabled last month, and town officials are wary of speculating on how those funds could be spent prior to the deal being finalized.

The town hall bid would have allowed for "expansion and renovation" of the site, and would have included a larger boardroom and community meeting space, health and safety upgrades and energy efficiency upgrades, according to the ballot language.

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It's also unclear where Tuesday night's decision — roughly 64 percent of the 6,904 ballots returned voted "no" on the issue — leaves the now-stalled town hall expansion, a project that officials suggest needs to come sooner or later as the town races toward its projected 65,000 population in the coming decades.

A rendering of the Front Range Landfill's expanded area and relocated entrance contingent on the closure of the adjacent Denver Regional Landfill. (Town of Erie / Courtesy rendering)

"We respect the will of the voters as expressed in Tuesday's results," Erie spokeswoman Katie Hansen wrote in an email. "We believe we could have serviced the debt entirely without any property tax levy. At this point it's premature to say if, how, or when a similar set of circumstances would present themselves. That said, the need exists and it is an issue that will need to be addressed by the town sooner rather than later."

The vote does not preclude the town from saving the $4 million for an eventual town hall expansion, however, and one option for a redevelopment of the headquarters could be to bring it back to the ballot again in two years.

With some funds saved through the town's traditional impact fee program and the potential cash infusion from Waste Connections, a similar ballot item may prove more successful in the future, officials say.

That's if a deal is even realized in the coming weeks; concerns from residents and newly elected town leaders over the stipulations of the deal may ultimately doom the agreement.

The deal would eventually allow the adjacent Front Range Landfill to expand by more than 48 acres — in some cases closer to nearby residential developments to the west — as well as move its primary entrance for truck routes to County Road 7.

The agreement would mean that the company would be "doing a lot of visible filling for approximately five to seven years," outgoing Erie Mayor Pro-Tem Mark Gruber, who called for the agreement to be renegotiated prior its tabling last month, said Wednesday.

"For me," he added, "that becomes an eyesore that infringes on the town's development — it would have an impact on residential development, on retail economic development — that's not quite worth the endeavor."

Newly elected Trustees Christiaan van Woudenberg and Adam Haid echoed similar sentiments on Wednesday, with the latter saying he wasn't in favor of the current agreement.

Town officials are expected to reconvene on negotiations with the company prior to a pre-annexation agreement vote later this month.

The portion of the Denver Regional site that was open to the public closed in 2011 after nearly 30 years, with nearly 24.5 million cubic yards of garbage spread across 160 acres and stacked up to 250 feet deep.

The site left about 80,000 cubic yards of space to accept waste from "special projects" in the years since.

The agreement also allows the company to begin filling the site with new waste — including sewer sludge, animal carcasses, fly ash and medical waste — according to the agreement's details.

It's been denounced by nearby residents as a potential "beacon for mismanagement" in the days since the town announced the plans, and some have questioned why officials tied the town hall project with an unpopular plan.

The proposal is a "blatant disregard for the community," David Kelly, a neighbor to the site, said Wednesday.

He added that when he purchased his Vista Ridge home in 2012, the site had been promised to close, or at least begin to move farther away from the nearby Vista Ridge neighborhood, in the coming years.

"Everyone was looking forward to seeing that landfill go away," he said. "And there will be no end to it in sight with what they're proposing. Boulder has the Flatirons, Longmont has Longs Peak, and we have the landfill that they keep wanting to make bigger."

It's unclear what will be renegotiated in the coming days, though the landfill's expansion to the west is likely to be the topic of discussion. It may, however, mean the company's promise to contribute $4 million toward the town will disappear, officials say.

"If we get involved with renegotiations, that money could go away," Gruber said. "If they concede to not expanding to the west, that can cost them revenue. They will have done those calculations, and they may say we can't afford that (contribution) now."

A new Board of Trustees is expected to vote on the early iterations of the agreement on April 24. Whether it's a renegotiated version or not remains to be seen.

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